I'd have to agree rush being slightly under-represented in the environment currently, but that on the Joust side. In Melee there are several very dominant decktypes for Rush (Kennon's GJ from LCG Days being a good example, über-Viper's are another one), which are very competitive. The difficulty in giving, for example, Baratheon a huge boost in rush is to find a balance in boosting them in Joust, while not making them too OP in Melee. And that, if anything, is the reasoning I see behind errata'ing Heir, because that's where it would have really gotten ridiculous. Of course one solution would be to have some "if you have only one opponent" stuff added, since it would only affect the Joust side.

That said, I think Twn2dn and Stag are pretty much right, what the game needs is a real glass cannon. Something that can be broken by applying adequate force, but makes the opponent have to scramble on for dear life from the get-go. Even if they are playing Martell. Instead, the only rush-related cards Bara has been getting after the King's Landing Cycle (which had KoF, arguably one of the best glass-cannon cards Bara has gotten) in the CPs are support- and resilience type cards, like the new Mr. Lomys. Okay, there's one good power-rush Melissandre, but that's about it. Cards that actually give you the possibility to get power faster have been few and far between. Of course, one of the primary reasons for this has been the development of two completely new strands into the Baratheon cacophony... Asshai (mainly control-ish, even though Melissandre + Power of Faith = Good Rush) and Knights (mainly beef and aggro, quite little actual rush anywhere, at least in the newer cards). This current set of CPs seems to be slightly better, with Stormlands Bastard (Renown Queen of Thorns with Kingdom of Shadows!) and Dragonstone Watchtower (I can see myself naming BotS quite often) both being cards that have at least some potential. Now if we only got an event that gave all Bastards renown for a turn...

But I really do think that the game is slightly missing the feel of 'action' that proper glass-cannon rush builds would bring. And not just those "my lords cannot be killed, and they go up and down and up and down..." things, which really can't be speeded up too much anymore, since they're a bit too resilient already by now. Something that would make playing GTM on turn 1 feel risky, since that means having 2 less gold to play characters etc.

Of the other Houses with any Rush potential only Targaryen seems to be developing it further, while Stark, Martell and Greyjoy all seem to be moving AWAY from power-grab instead of in that direction...

I've never hard to play against a bara hyper rush, so I don't know what its like. Nor have I seen a turn 2 game. Out local meta has a pretty slow pace to it, so games usually take around 5-6 rounds.

Mathias Fricot said:

Not so much. Despite staton's assertion above - a LOt has to go right to pull off a Tyrn 2 win - mathcup to start with. One Faer of Winter + RBD sequence and you're pretty mcuh wrecked. But it can be done, gien a foru or five card flop, drawing into teh rigth tools adn getting lucky with initiative adn Plots.

Yeah most bara rush decks win on turn three. I'm just saying that its quite possible to win on turn two. Which I'm kinda ok with, but most decks win on turn three at the earliest.

That has been my experience as well.

I'd be OK with consistent Turn 2s, and Turn 1 wins conceivable, but unlikely. Basically, I want to speed the build (and the environment) up by one Turn from where we are right now - and I concede: its a very, very tricky thing to handle properly from a design perspective.

What do you think of the new Bastard in the latest article?

I think it makes rush more consistent, but not necessarily faster... and honestly I think winning on turn two and three is perfectly suitable for rush. I'd just assume turn 1 wins be urban legends. You never see it happen, but everyone has a friend of a friend that swears they did or it happened to them. In a game that uses single matches to determine placement in tournaments, I don't round one wins ever being something that is able to be built as a goal.

Kennon said:

He's going to be a solid littel addition in the 1 gold spot in my dekcs. I have felt for a long time that baratheon needed more renown - but he's not going to eb that big of a help: he only adds the boost to uniques - and most Bara uniques that see play already have renown. still: it will be a nice boost for Margaery and (I guess) some of the RAinbow Guard. Brienne too - she is pretty much a staple.

now - if we could just get renown on some of the non unique Knights . we'd really be cooking with gas. Too bad that **** warhorse doesn't quite work.

The card is pretty terrible. I doubt I would trade the stealth on Robert's Bastard for this guy. I mean it has to be a unique character, and in Baratheon you have enough worry trying to keep the other unique's on the table. Plus its only for one challenge, so you can't even combo it with stand. Unless you want to waste some sort of standing effect on a one str ally. Oh yeah, he's an ally too. Doubt I'll put him in any of my decks.

Dear God - you're right Staton. I missed the "until the end of the challenge' bit, i thought it was "until the end of the phase". Another underpwoered Baratheon card - I agree: it won't see much play. Weak sauce.

I mean seriously: it wouldn't have been balanced at "until the end of phase"?! Cripes. but things like Castellan stick around uncanged for years.

Penfold said:

Did no one else print out the Heir to the Iron Throne when it was spoiled months before release? Our group did, and if that card had not been errated, first turn wins would not be "urban legend." We had a few, for sure, and quite a few more games were won by flipping Red Wedding or Winter Festival turn 2. Rarely did games go past turn 2. I can't tell you how many games I won when my opponent played Valar on turn 2, and I didn't even run Power of Blood. There was literally nothing your opponent could do a lot of games unless they drew into a massive amount of non-kneeling control effects, which was quite rare.

I made decks with it, it was ridiculously overpowered for sure.

longclaw said:

No one ran Fear of Winter in your group? Did you really get enough renown and vigilant on the flop to consistently hit a turn 1 win in an envrionment with an un-restricted Fear of Winter?

Stag Lord said:

Remember, the restricted list came out slightly after Heir was first spoiled. People had maybe a month or so of playing with Heir but also having a restricted list (before Heir was errata'd). And Fear is rarely the restricted card of choice for most decks. Honestly, other than in Greyjoy decks, I rarely saw it played at regionals.

Fear of Winter lost a lot of steam when Lineage and Legacy came out, I think. And Lineage and Legacy was the first turn choice of that deck - so good with card draw Renly getting you 2 cards that turn with Heir and not bad gold to boot. That plot handled Fear decks quite nicely.

I think that supports the point I was trying to make. That I want rush to be more consistent, but not faster. I would like to see a Rush deck take two dominance phases to three challenge phases to be able to win. It gives non-rush decks time to disrupt the deck but if they make play mistakes it just rolls right over them. Turn 1 wins or turn 2 wins on the plot phase is WAY too much like flipping a coin for me to ever want to play with or against such decks.

Heir sounds utterly broken in Bara if this is what was happening, and to be clear, I don't have any reason not to take your word for it.

Penfold said:

I agree with Penfold wholly.

I still have my doubts about Turn 1 wins in a Fear environment - but water under the bridge now. i had no real objectiosn to it going House Targaryen only in light of Fear and VB getting restricted.

I agree completely with Staglord agreeing with Penfold.

I can somehow believe the Turn 1 wins with Heir, even though I never tested it myself. A bit before Heir came out I was fiddling with a sort-of Baratheon take on Siege-like extra challenges combined with unkneeling or vigilant renown characters and uo-melissandre for extra power... and that deck was managing Turn 1 or Turn 2 plot-phase wins against some decks much easier than I anticipated. Heir would really have made that very much less hit/miss.

Oh, and yeah, I also missed the limitation on the duration for the Stormlands Bastard. Sigh. I just knew there had to be something wrong with that card, since it was actually seeming like a decent Baratheon rush card in this expansion.

Baratheon has a decided lack of renown granting attachments at the moment - something they historically always had access to. these cards. Although these tend to fall on the inefficient side (by thier very nature0 a 0 or 1 cost renown attachment to give soem of Bara's non uniques that added punch would be a lot more helpful than this spoiled card.

Stag Lord said:

I'm sorry, but I don't agree here. I think that Bara has a great number of renown, granted not too many renown attachments, yet I don't really feel that bara need it right now. IMHO Bara don't need EVERY character to have renown to make a great rush deck. I for one love the spoiled Lord card. Now I can look into changing my Bara knights rush deck into a Lord Deck (hopefully).

I think I'm gonna have to side with just about everyone else and say that I'm extremely disappointed in the "until end of challenge" text on this card, until end of phase would've granted it a great deal of additional versatility. As it stands I can think of several other cards I would much rather use up valuable space on.

Winged_Human said:

Now here's where I actually disagree, sorta. I don't think that EVERY character needs to have renown, BUT I do think that bara needs a way to give characters renown. The bastard just isn't cutting it though. Right now almost all bara renown is on unique characters, which means that once that guy is dead, he's dead. Therefore you have to try and make the deck redundant so you can get the renown guys plus maybe a dupe or a bodyguard to try and keep them around. If we had a non unique attachment, or hell I'd even take The Hallowed Ground back, it would let Baratheon depend less on the unique characters and actually be able to get some use out of those non unique guys they have. You wouldn't need to run two or three estermonts, or three roberts or three knight of flowers, etc.

What staton said. And its pretty clear from performance that renown concentrated in 3-4 uniques serves as the architecture for a nearly Tier 1 build - but they need that extra push in supporting characters to move them closer to the top. This little Ally/Lord is just to narrow in scope to really help a tight build and the threat needs to be on a broad front - not just form the Baratheon brothers backed up by (maybe) Loras and Mel.

I think you guys are missing something that is readily available to Bara decks. Which is vigilant. Would haveing a permanent renown on more bara non unique characters be good? Yes. Would it make the bara rush deck OP? I think so. In the current environment, aggro decks aren't cutting it anymore. With the MArtell/Lanister control decks taking top places in alot of the regionals. Either way, I would love to see Bara decks make a bigger difference in the competitive arena than they are now. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, or maybe I should just sit back and give the other houses their day in the limelight.

How would vigilant break bara renown decks? I mean we have vigilant and renown now and nothing is really game breaking. Also you mentioned martell and lannister being on top right now. Those two houses make vigilant a lot less useful. Either all you guys are knelt and can't win a challenge, or you just get the challenge canceled. I mean Vigilant, and renown for that matter, are useless if you can't even win challenges. Also other than Fanatic and Banner for the Storm, how do you give characters vigilant? The one event is only for unique bara characters. Or are we talking about non-unique guys already with vigilant getting renown? Well Arena Knight already has renown part of the time and so does house florent scouts. Well I guess maybe Royal Guard would be pretty op with renown.